Cherchez la Verite: Notwithstanding Jon Stewart's ridicule of Paul Krugman's suggestion that the U.S. Treasury mint a trillion-dollar coin to avert austerity, all of the top economists who have not gone over to "the dark side of the force" (aka the neoliberal kleptocracy) know that (1) the platinum coin is but one of many viable ways to avert austerity and (2) imposition of austerity is a sure recipe to crash the economy, bringing great suffering to all but the top 1%. Here, top economist Bill Black relates the deep history of austerity, revealing it to be a self-serving right-wing dogma rather than a scientifically determined necessity.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Notwithstanding Jon Stewart's ridicule of Paul Krugman's suggestion that the U.S. Treasury mint a trillion-dollar coin to avert austerity, all of the top economists who have not gone over to "the dark side of the force" (aka the neoliberal kleptocracy) know that (1) the platinum coin is but one of many viable ways to avert austerity and (2) imposition of austerity is a sure recipe to crash the economy, bringing great suffering to all but the top 1%. Here, top economist Bill Black relates the deep history of austerity, revealing it to be a self-serving right-wing dogma rather than a scientifically determined necessity.

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January 18, 2013

Stewart vs Krugman and the Religion of Austerity

Bill Black: Obama has options, including the trillion dollar coin, to refuse to negotiate under the gun but he's taken them off the table; both sides subscribe to the dogma of austerity
Watch full multipart The Black Financial and Fraud Report

Bio

William K. Black, author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.